Peck, Harry Thurston - The Cosmopolitan, July, 1899

The place which this great genius must ultimately hold in literary history has not yet been definitely settled. French critics link his name with that of Shakespeare, while English critics seem to think that a comparison like this is very daring. My own belief is that at the last his name will be placed higher still than Shakespeare's, at the very apex of a pyramid of literary fame.

Theophile Gautier as quoted in A Memoir of Balzac, Honoré de. by K. P. Wormley

When I saw Balzac for the first time he was about thirty-six, and his personality was one of those that are never forgotten. In his presence Shakespeare's words came to my memory—before him "nature might stand up and say to all the world: This was a man." He wore the monk's habit of white flannel or cashmere, in which, some time later, he made Louis Boulanger paint him. What fancy had led him to choose, in preference to all other costumes, this particular one, which he always wore, I do not know. Perhaps it symbolized to his eyes the cloistral life to which his work condemned him; and, benedictine of romance, he wore the robe. However that may be, it became him wonderfully….

As to his eyes, there were never any like them; they had a life, a light, an inconceivable magnetism; the whites of the eyeballs was pure, limpid, with a bluish tinge, like that of an infant or a virgin, enclosing two black diamonds, dashed at moments with gold reflections—eyes to make an eagle drop his lids—eyes to read through walls and into bosoms or to terrify a furious wild beast—the eyes of a sovereign, a seer, a subjugator. The habitual expression of the face was that of puissant hilarity, of Rabelaisian and monachal joy.

Strange as it may seem to say so in the nineteenth century, Balzac was a seer. His power as an observer, his discernment as a physiologist, his genius as a writer, do not sufficiently account for the infinite variety of the two or three thousand types which play a rôle more or less important in his human comedy. He did not copy them: he lived them ideally. He wore their clothes, contracted their habits, moved in their surroundings, was themselves, during the necessary time.

Cosmic Consciousness, by Richard Maurice Bucke, [1901] - CHAPTER 12.  Honoré de Balzac.

While still very young Balzac decided to be a writer. It seems that he felt, even as a boy, that he was destined to do something great in that line, and he composed at school, among other things, a treatise on the will and an epic poem.

Left Drawing of Balzac in the mid-1820s, attributed to Achille Devéria

Later he wrote at Paris, in the course of ten years, mostly under the pseudonym of "Horace de Saint Aubin," some forty volumes, said to be almost entirely valueless. A good authority [James, Henry, Jr. French Poets and Novelists] sums up this episode in Balzac's history as follows: "Before he was thirty years old he had published, under a variety of pseudonyms, some twenty long novels, veritable Grub Street productions, written in sordid Paris attics, in poverty, in perfect obscurity. Several of these "œuvres de jeunesse" have lately been republished, but the best of them are unreadable. No writer ever served harder apprenticeship to his art, or lingered more hopelessly at the base of the ladder of fame."

Madame Surville as quoted in A Memoir of Balzac, Honoré de. by K. P. Wormley

It was not until 1833, about the time of the publication of the "Médecin de Campagne," that he first thought of collecting all his personages together and forming a complete society. The day when this idea burst upon his mind was a glorious day for him. He started from the Rue Cassini, where he had taken up his abode after leaving the Rue de Tournon, and rushed to the faubourg Poissonniere, where I was then living.
'Make your bow to me,' he said to us, joyously; 'I am on the highroad to become a genius!'
He then unfolded his plan, which frightened him a little, for no matter how vast his brain might be, it needed time to work out a scheme like that.
'How glorious it will be if I succeed,' he said, walking up and down the room. He could not keep still; joy radiated from every feature. 'I'll willingly let them call me a maker of tales, all the while that I am cutting stones for my edifice. I gloat in advance over the astonishment of those near-sighted creatures as they see it rise’

James, Henry, Jr. French Poets and Novelists 1878

Balzac proposed to himself to illustrate by a tale or a group of tales every phase of French life and manners during the first half of the nineteenth century. To be colossally and exhaustively complete—complete not only in the generals but in the particulars—to touch upon every salient point, to illuminate every typical feature, to reproduce every sentiment, every idea, every person, every place, every object, that has played a part, however minute, however obscure, in the life of the French people.

Theophile Gautier quoted in A Memoir of Honoré de Balzac by K. P. Wormley

Balzac owes nothing to antiquity. For him there are neither Greeks nor Romans, nor any trace in the composition of his talent of Homer, or Virgil, or Horace—no one was ever less classic ……..

A Memoir of Honoré de Balzac by K. P. Wormley. Roberts Bros., Boston, 1892

August, 1833. The 'Médecin de Campagne' will reach you next week. It has cost me ten times the work that 'Louis Lambert' did. There is not a sentence, not an idea, which has not been viewed and reviewed, read and reread, and corrected; the labor was frightful. I may now die in peace. I have done a great work for my country. To my mind it is better to have written this book than to have made laws and to have won battles. It is the gospel in action….
October, 1833. Do you know how the 'Médecin' has been received? By a torrent of insults. The three newspapers of my own party which have spoken of it have done so with the utmost contempt for the work and its author.
December, 1835. Never has the torrent which bears me onward been so rapid; no more terribly majestic work has ever compelled the human brain. I go to my toil as a gambler to cards. I sleep only five hours and work eighteen; I shall end by killing myself.

A Memoir of Honoré de Balzac by K. P. Wormley. Roberts Bros., Boston, 1892

One might suppose that his feelings would have been hurt when he found the way barred against his entrance to the Academy. But he behaved with dignity and withdrew his name when failure seemed probable. 'The matter does not stir my feelings very much,' he said; 'some persons think not at all, but they are mistaken. If I do get there, so much the better; if I do not, no matter'.

a clerk, a machine, a riding-school hack, eating and drinking and sleeping at fixed hours. I should be like everyone else. And that's what they call living, that life at the grindstone, doing the same thing over and over again.... I am hungry and nothing is offered to appease my appetite.

Balzac, Honore de and Kathleen Raine (Translator). Lost Illusions. 1837.

Genius is answerable only to itself; it is the sole judge of the means, since it alone knows the end; thus genius must consider itself as above the law, for it is the task of genius to remake the law; moreover the man who frees himself from his time and place may take everything, hazard everything, for everything is his by right.

Men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845

A Memoir of Honoré de Balzac by K. P. Wormley

A complete life of Balzac cannot be written at the present time and possibly never can be. Nearly the whole of what he was to himself, what his own being was, what were the influences that molded it, how that eye that saw the manifold lives of others saw his own life, how that soul which crowned its earthly work with a vision of the living word was nurtured—what that soul was, in short, has been concealed from sight.

Harry Thurston Peck -The Cosmopolitan, July, 1899

Search as one may, there is no complete life of Balzac. There are still unpublished letters and papers in the possession of the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, a compatriot who thoroughly understood him; but adding these to all that has been written, it is still doubtful if the real man will be found behind them. Expansive at times, yet he withdrew from the knowledge of others. There are periods in his life when he disappears, lies concealed from sight, and each must interpret for himself the secret that made his power and insures his fame.

W. P. Trent - Atlantic Monthly, October, 1896

The unexpected sometimes happens, as I discovered recently when I finished the fiftieth volume of M. Calmann Levy's popular edition of the works of Balzac. I had thought that the completion of Horace's odes and Shakespeare's plays, and of the 'Odyssey,' marked the three chief epochs in my own intellectual life, and that I might not likely be so stirred, so swept away again, by any book or by any author.

But I had erred.

Balzac, whose novels taken singly had moved me powerfully, but had not often swept me away, whom I had made a companion of for years without fully comprehending—this Balzac, when viewed in the light of his total and stupendous achievements, suddenly stood out before me in his full stature and might, as one of the few genuine world geniuses that our race can point to with legitimate and unshakable pride. I had emerged from the 'Comédie Humaine' just as I had emerged from the Homeric poems and from the plays of Shakespeare, feeling that I had traversed a world and been in the presence of a veritable creator."